Little Rock Mayor Frank Scott Jr.,
responding to complaints, wants the city to talk with the Lime scooters company about safer operation in the city. Good luck.

Mayor Frank Scott Jr. wrote on Twitter Tuesday, “Mobility devices, including electronic scooters, have posed challenges to the safety of riders, pedestrians, & others. These devices must be driven on the sidewalks within the [Little Rock city limits]. Such devices are not motor vehicles and cannot be driven on the streets.”

Scott says City Attorney Tom Carpenter is writing a letter to Lime on his behalf, and on behalf of the City Board of Directors, “to determine the next steps we should take in order to ensure the safety and the quality of life for both the riders of mobility devices and for all others.”

Here’s a problem: I’m not sure sidewalk use (the only legal place to scoot in Little Rock) is safer than street use, the very point made by a North Little Rock official when some Lime scooters got dumped in that city despite lack of a contract for their use there.

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Scott has heard complaints from the Heights neighborhood about kids on the sidewalk on the Kavanaugh shopping strip. I encountered a couple of kids — no helmet, age about 8 — wobbling two abreast and unsteadily on an uneven stretch of sidewalk along Kavanaugh a few days ago. They had little concern for those on foot. As another old grump noted to me, their parents provided the credit card for the kids. Some of these same parents, I”d speculate, let their kids roll all over the neighborhood in golf carts that aren’t designed for street use.

In short: Get off my lawn!

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I’ll stipulate the city has bigger problems. Unrelated but noted: An article in today’s Democrat-Gazette says Scott, who’s promised heightened transparency in city government, wants the “task forces” he’s named to advise on various city issues will be closed to the public.

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